


Blood, Cubed

by scioscribe



Category: The Perfection (2019)
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Canonical Child Abuse, Canonical Rape/Non-con, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, Mutilation, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Voluntary Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 16:23:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21930331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Lizzie and Charlotte speak the same fucked-up language.
Relationships: Elizabeth "Lizzie" Wells/Charlotte Willmore
Comments: 7
Kudos: 49
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Blood, Cubed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivine/gifts).



> References Lizzie and Charlotte's canonical abuse.

**i. pig**

Lizzie saw it for the first time in a marketplace in Hunan, before Charlotte joined them. Coagulated pig’s blood, sold in shiny, tofu-like cubes; they had a livery color to them and got cooked sprinkled with chives.

She tried them with congee. They weren’t half-bad.

“You’re far more adventurous than I am,” Anton said, shuddering at the delicate little quiver the pig’s blood gave when Lizzie prodded at a cube.

“I’m only imitating you,” Lizzie said, laughing. “You’re the champion of dragging us to all these out-of-the-way places. Can you blame me for wanting to try out-of-the-way food? Trust me, this never turned up at the Panda Express back in Tampa.”

“You, my dear, are the only memory of Tampa I intend to keep.”

She ducked her head a little, hiding her warmed face in the steam coming up off her plate. “Blood has a good flavor to it, that’s all I’m saying.” And he’d been the one to teach her that, too; her legs stretched out in his little chapel, the muscles of her straining things vibrating like plucked cello strings, blood pounding at the heart of her. At some point she’d always bitten her tongue. Running wet and red at both ends of her body. Anton had run his thumb along her lips, painting her mouth as if with lipstick, and he’d told her to memorize this taste. Not the taste of failure, though she’d failed, he’d said. The taste of _correction_ , of the desire for _the perfection._ Achievement was paid for in blood. She should lick up every drop of it.

At their little table, now, Anton didn’t look like he remembered any of that, so Lizzie decided that she didn’t remember it either. He was the one who decided what they talked about, so he was the one who decided, more or less, what had happened. They were musicians, not composers: the songs weren’t real for them until they heard the notes in the air. Sound was the only thing that mattered.

She spooned another bite of congee and salty, savory blood into her mouth.

Poor fucking pig, she thought. Nobody had ever let it try for perfection.

**ii. lizzie**

Charlotte had saved her. Deliverance via meat cleaver and drug-induced insanity. Deliverance via the total, irrevocable wreckage of her once shining career.

Saying more or less what Anton had said: _I’m doing this for your own good. I’m saving you._

Lizzie thought about that a lot, during the days she was alone, before she made up her mind.

A handful of differences between Anton and Charlotte, she decided in the end. Her one fucking remaining hand, to tally them up, to hold onto them.

She didn’t think Charlotte had gotten her jollies from seeing that cleaver go down. She’d _felt_ Charlotte get her jollies, hadn’t she? She’d felt Charlotte’s cunt flutter against her tongue, tasted the hot tang of her body. She knew what Charlotte’s pleasure looked like.

Sure, there was the jealousy angle to consider, but Charlotte was as good as she’d ever been. She could walk right back into the musical world right now and start rebuilding her career, and in another year, they’d be booking the same concert halls. She had the right kind of sob-story for the art world—a bunch of motherfuckers with short memories but ready handkerchiefs. Charlotte hadn’t wanted to wreck her.

Not the way Anton had wanted to fuck her. Oh, she’d traveled around in his hip pocket, his pet star, his almost-daughter, but after she’d really, truly achieved the perfection, after she’d gone months and months without any corrections—the way he’d looked at her had changed.

Maybe what decided it, in the end, was that Charlotte had sat with her by the side of the road; she’d sat there with Lizzie’s blood on her face, smeared there like a hand reaching for her mouth. She hadn’t wiped it away. Her gray-blue eyes had been bright with the kind of conviction nobody ever had if they were still sane, but she’d seen the other side of it, too. She’d accepted Lizzie’s blood was her problem, too—her responsibility, not just Lizzie’s.

Charlotte was someone who would remember. Someone who’d play all the notes on the page.

Besides, Lizzie couldn’t play anymore anyway. Anton’s world of perfection and performance and fine-print penetration was closed to her. He’d made that pretty clear.

Charlotte’s world was one of sex and rage and knives.

Lizzie became a citizen.

**iii. charlotte**

Lizzie liked running her fingers through the short, brush-like texture of Charlotte’s real hair. When she got close to the nape of Charlotte’s neck, Charlotte always shivered, her toes digging into the mattress. Now, after their five-year anniversary, Charlotte made the most unguarded sounds of her life. Moaning like a porn star just from having her hair petted. It turned Lizzie on like nothing else.

She traced a heart on Charlotte’s right breast, just above her gorgeously stiffened nipple.

“Yeah,” Charlotte said. “I love you too.”

Lizzie licked that nipple, sucking it in between her teeth and biting it a little.

The fifth anniversary was supposed to be wood, but they weren’t exactly traditional.

“I want something you’ve never given anyone else,” Lizzie had told her.

“You want to take my virginity. Again. Really ruthless, Lizzie. Total pirate ravishment fantasies, I’m serious.”

“More or less,” Lizzie had said. “I want to take something from you. I want us to be even.”

“We’ll never be even. What I did to you—”

Lizzie had shaken her head, overriding her. “I want to make you imperfect,” she’d said. “Because you’ll be better that way. I want to fuck you up to save you.” She’d pushed her fingers through Charlotte’s hair and Charlotte had whimpered quietly in the back of her throat. “And I want you to tell me how.”

Now, in their bed, Lizzie shifted her balance, bracing one elbow against the bed so she could press her hand between Charlotte’s legs. She would never get tired of this. Fuck the cello. Charlotte was the most beautiful instrument she’d ever played.

Charlotte had looked at her for a long time, during that conversation before their fifth anniversary. They’d been eating Chinese—Lizzie’s order—pig’s blood curd and congee, and Charlotte had looked down at her plate. Lizzie didn’t know, even now, if she’d been thinking about blood and the prices you paid or just that gloppy-looking lunch she’d had in the alleyway the morning after they’d met. The shit Lizzie hadn’t been eating while Charlotte had been off stealing the cleaver.

Charlotte had said, finally, “As long as I can hear the music, I’m always going to want to play it perfectly. Some part of me is always going to wish I didn’t come back here to help you, so I’d still have my arm.” She’d taken another bite of her dinner. She’d raised her chin after she’d swallowed. She’d looked Lizzie in the eyes. “But if I couldn’t hear the music, I guess none of that would matter.”

Lizzie’s mouth had gone dry. “I think with only the one hand, I’d be pretty shitty at sign language.”

Charlotte had only shrugged. “I know you. I’ll always know what you’re trying to say.”

They had fucked on the table that night, bare skin against the mahogany.

Now, of course, they were in bed. Well, you couldn’t have take-no-prisoners sex every night, not when you were a settled married couple, not when you’d already been together as long as they had.

After Charlotte came against Lizzie’s fingers, Lizzie traced some of the scar tissue by Charlotte’s ears. They could have done a better job, she supposed. But she liked these little external signs.

Charlotte caught Lizzie’s hand and brought it to her mouth, sucking the taste of herself off Lizzie’s fingers.

“I don’t regret it for a second,” Charlotte said. “But the level at which this turns you on is fucking disturbing.” She was smiling, though.

Lizzie lay against her and whispered in her ear: “You always talk more now that you don’t have to hear what you’re saying. You make so much noise. I like it.”

Charlotte rolled over, taking herself away from what was, to her, just warm breath and meaningless vibration. She’d said a long time ago that she was just going to ignore Lizzie when she did that—“The only thing worse than a clit-tease is a hearing-tease, seriously.” She lowered herself down between Lizzie’s legs, tucking Lizzie’s thighs over her shoulders.

Lizzie leaned back on the pillows as Charlotte licked up into her cunt.

Relationships took work. Everybody said that. They only knew how to do one kind of work, that was all.

But aside from that one little problem, they had a perfect marriage.


End file.
